Patna, (Bihar Times): Terming the rail budget as an election stunt Bihar chief minister and former railway minister Nitish Kumar on Friday dubbed it all drama and drum-beating.

When railway minister Lalu Yadav is generally being applauded for his budget his arch-rival Nitish, who is undertaking the Vikas Yatra, said in a Purnia village that talks of introduction of Bullet trains have been going on since Indira era. But experts always found the proposal non-viable.

Nitish told the mediapersons that the security of passengers has been ignored and Lalu’s successors in the railway ministry will have to face a problem in the years to come. He also described introduction of new trains in Bihar as an election stunt.

The former railway minister said it was he who introduced the railway safety plan for 2003 to 2010 due to which the number of accidents has fallen. The interim budget makes it clear that the railways is on a downward trend and the operating costs of the railways have shown an increase from 75 per cent to almost 89 per cent.

Nitish said that this shows that the profit claims made by Lalu are false. “When there was economic boom, the railways gained; now when there’s economic slowdown, there is a decline,” Nitish was quoted as saying. “The proposed factories in Chhapra and Madhepura have only 26 per cent share of the railways while the rest of the fund is being sought from private parties,” he said. The chief minister wondered why the railways is not footing the entire bill when it is claiming so much of profits.

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